#inkless-printer

His Henchman is crazy.

Or at least, that's what Grim thinks when he's woken up at sunrise to Yue's bizarre ramblings. Something about the time being 1 AM, then fireflies at night, and a tall, horned figure – is what he takes from their babble amidst his own groans and pleas to return to sleep. He'd think them delirious from slumber, mumbling about another dream, if it weren't for the way Yue's eyes sparkled with genuine interest. Grim yields, in the end, for one of the many things he's learned about his reliable servant is that they can be awfully enthusiastic when it comes to this world's curiosities.

“He told me to call him whatever I want,” Yue continues, ruffling Grim's fur dry with a clean rag. Before he could insert magnificent ideas of his own, they beat him to it with a soft smile on their lips.

“I'm thinking of naming him Nyx: the personification of the night. What do you think?”

“What? Because he only shows up at night?” Like some wacky cryptid.

“Yup.”

He hears his henchman forgo the brush, letting it clatter loudly against the table.

“Hm... Nyx, huh...” Grim falls into thought, testing the name on his tongue like premium quality tuna. He doesn't even notice how Yue ties the striped ribbon around his neck. Triumphant, he turns to them with a grin.

“That's not half-bad, Henchman! It's cool and mysterious. Not as cool and mysterious as me, of course, but I'd say it's a close second!”

“Naturally. I wouldn't dare bestow a name mightier than the Great Grim's.”

Despite the stream of praise his henchman delivers (which he pleasantly basks in), Yue eventually derails, returning to speak of the horned man yet again. What Grim's superior brain gathers is this: One, this Nyx guy is super weird. Two, Yue's interest has been piqued like no other before.

He'll demand some omurice as payment for his counsel later on.

. . .

Malleus has made a friend.

The news was dropped onto Lilia's lap rather unceremoniously when one night, the Young Lord—having just returned from another evening excursion, went to sit with him in the Diasomnia lounge. This time, however, the quaintest of smiles adorned his face... It was an unusual sight but certainly not unwelcome. And much like any doting parent, his curiosity led him to ask.

Malleus had replied with a question of his own.

"Lilia, do you know of the Prefect that resides in Ramshackle Dorm?"

"Yue? Why yes, of course. I've spoken to them once or twice. They made quite a show during the Ceremony."

Yue— Lilia soon comes to learn— is completely unaware of Malleus's identity as a prince and a figure of authority, of power. As such, they bear no fear for him, even going so far as to bestow him a pet name, of all things.

(“Nyx? As in the night spirit? How fitting.")

Thus began the pattern of Lilia covering for Malleus's nighttime absence, not daring to ask nor scold when the prince would return in strange and stranger states.

When he would return to the dormitory partially caked with dirt and mud (a consequence of helping the prefect with their little garden of life.) Or when he would return with a box of homemade cake, a pretty stone from their walks, a drawing of him supposedly made by the prefect's beast, and with inquiries of the complexities of human nature.

Sometimes, Lilia can't help but feel a bit guilty, constantly boring witness to Silver and Sebek's searches into the night.

Yet that sliver of guilt fades, in the end, when Malleus smiles more often than before, when he approaches Lilia in the winter with the request of delivering a Holiday Card.

As he watches the magicless human rush into their abode, card in hand, ghosts and Grim awaiting their entrance...

he has never felt prouder and more grateful for fate.

. . .

From a distance, Vil watches.

He watches as the feared Briar Prince lets a small, feeble human talk his ear off, calm and unresisting, a hand on his chin as he ponders along Yue's barrage of words. He gives the prefect full reign of the conversation. He lets himself be taken away by their stories and details. He lets them speak, which they do.

Just after the horrors, highs, lows, and thrills of the VDC, the two chat as if nothing even happened. The onslaught of it all feels like a fever dream to Vil. First, the mental toll of overblotting, then their loss to RSA's nursery rhyme performance, and now the shocking reveal of Yue (innocent, bold, mundane little Yue) and Malleus Draconia's relationship.

He isn't even sure what to make of it. They're clearly friends, yet Vil can't bring himself to chalk it up to just that. His years and years of showbiz cinema has taught him the ins and outs of body language. He watches. He sees:

There's the smiles on both their faces; cheeks raised taut, dimples carved with genuine laughter. There's that glimmer in Yue's eyes and the odd tenderness of Malleus's own, both gazes locked onto one another with an undisturbed focus. There's the fact that Yue had given him an invitation to the VDC, or that Malleus had fixed the stage partially to show off to the magicless human, or that their hands are currently mere centimeters away from each other.

Nocturnal fae do not submit to the night. They inhabit it, wield it, bend it, serve it. Such is the same for the Lord of the Valley himself. Yet on this blessed evening, he is far, far away from his crowned domain. (His cold, marbled throne stands vacant of a ruler. The kingdom will last a few hours in his absence, as it always has, in their hours of dormancy or plentiful slumber.) Instead, he walks in the past.

The charm of ruins has always been their history. Amongst the derelict cracks and the ivy that calls them home, lurks the existence of what was before: a place so full of life now barely existing as a structure's rotting corpse. 

To imagine: Once upon a time, these walls had been a vibrant color, decorated with fixtures like paintings and portraits. The wooden floorboards that creak upon his feet had been danced on merrily, ran on by bustling children, broken and repaired, polished and carpeted. 

This room had been a dining table, where the family would gather, eat, and say their grace. The children would throw peas and their mother would grow upset. Here is where they would play. Here is where they would bathe. Here is where they would sleep. Here is where they slept forever. 

Sometimes, it was not a mansion that he visited, but a court, or a church, or a tomb. Yet the ending stays the same. All of this– everything, it would leave, and the structure would remain as a museum of memories.

The thought had once brought Malleus  comfort. It was a ghostly reassurance, to know that his people were not the only ones left behind by history's false records, abandoned in the dust to lick their wounds, to isolate, to mourn and remember. It was solace found in loss. It was a companion found in loneliness. It was, to him, a form of consolation. 

Now, he fails to think the same. 

For as he wanders the hollow corridors of Ramshackle's building, it is not comfort that he feels, but hurt.

It is nothing, he thinks.

Ramshackle Dormitory is nothing without its residents. Bare of life, light, and laughter, it is nothing but a derelict building on the verge of collapsing, worn so much worse than it was before with no residing ghosts to keep it upright. It is nothing like the ruins Malleus so adores for ruins are comfort and history. Ramshackle is nothing but hurt and memories. 

He can't help but wonder why he teleported here, of all places.

Perhaps the nostalgia was too much to bear.

Perhaps he wanted to hurt.

Perhaps he simply missed those moments, bitter of their departure. 

The kitchens are lacking their stock-filled pantries with no tower of tuna for an exuberant direbeast. No flame for baking pies, made from the fruits of labor; Only shattered wood, collapsed countertops, and filthy animal trails.

The lounge is not a place where one finds comfort. It is a room with gaping holes from which the wind creeps in. There are no laughs here, no idle chatting, no dancing, singing, playing. Haphazardly strewn about are torn-open couches and fallen paintings. 

Their garden of life has rotten. The rows of foliage and canopies and crates of nature's bearings — all are reduced to nothing, to dirt, to soil, to rotting. The rose seeds he had given them wither in lack of care. The blueberries for cobbler, the yams for sweets, the flowers, the bees, all that time they'd spent farming-

It is lost now.

Deep beneath the squirming of his guts and the thorns that squeeze his chest, Malleus knows. He knows what is lost, and what is lost can seldom ever be recovered. Yet Lilia had taught him when he felt all too the same. When the happenings of STYX had left Ramshackle in a similar state. When the stars aligned. When he first felt hurt. Fae can do nothing for history but remember. And Malleus remembers. Will always remember.

Time is a spindle that halts for no one. The loom of fate will take its shape. The seasons will pass and gardens will wilt. Malleus will reminisce of all that was before: the lull of midnight walks, his human's gentle voice, newly budding plants, and songs of their world. But come what may, and what else is there to be taken away for Ramshackle Dorm will always be a home, to Yuu, to him, and now, to memories.

He vanishes in a flicker of green lights. 

. . .

“In my world, gargoyles and grotesques are related to religion,” his human friend told him, lost in their conversation of archaic structures and statues. It began when Malleus brought up the topic of their Ramshackle Dorm harboring gargoyles, and found that Yuu was ever eager to learn more of the concept. Majestic – they had called the beasts of stone. “They're built on the pillars of churches and cathedrals with the purpose of warding off evil and frightening away harm.”

The aura of night always seemed especially tame in their exchanges, as if a magical veil cast upon them both to preserve the moment, unharmed. (That veil was so delicate. He was a fool to believe otherwise.)

Malleus had responded in turn, with a tilt of his voice and a fondness reserved only for the child of man before him. He asked questions threaded from their statement. Yuu supplied information of their own.

They had raised their finger to beckon his attention once more, garnering focus for their additional words. 

“But not only are they protectors of the building itself – to keep water from damaging the structures, they're also the protectors of the people.”

The evening breeze carried away what few leaves it had gathered from the pavement, and the prefect turned to face him with a familiar sort of softness in their eyes.

Yuu smiled.